成人X站

SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

‘The Accountant’ is a standard action-thriller that is just good enough

Oct 14, 2016, 11:29 AM | Updated: 11:30 am

YouTube video

“The Accountant” is a standard issue action-thriller, with a good enough wrinkle to make it worth seeing.

Ben Affleck plays a nondescript accountant who works in a strip mall but, curiously, also does business around the world with arms brokers, drug cartels, money launderers, and assassins.

The Treasury Department can’t quite figure him out.

Related: Who would think a spring break trip would turn into this?

“So you’re telling me this guy risks his life doing forensic accounting for some of the scariest people on the planet, collects his fee, goes through all the trouble of laundering it, then gives almost all of it away?”

That’s the mystery of The Accountant — who is he? And what makes him tick? The answer lies mostly in his childhood. We discover he has more in common with Einstein or Mozart.

Affleck’s character — he has so many aliases, I don’t know which one to use — grows up socially isolated and awkward but finds a profession that can tap into his strengths and accommodate his weaknesses. Early on in the film, we also discover he’s an expert marksman and a highly trained fighter. Think Rain Man as James Bond. It turns out Affleck is playing Hollywood’s first autistic hero.

“I have difficulty socializing with other people, even though I want to,” The Accountant explains.

Affleck is not a great actor but he nicely handles the affectlessness of the high-functioning autistic adult. He foregoes the normal social niceties and misses all the social cues. But nothing escapes his notice when it comes to ferreting out numeric abnormalities in financial statements (One scene is very reminiscent of Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind”).

You have to be able to accept as a given that an autistic man could be a top-of-the-line, cold-blooded killer, when necessary. If you can do that, then this movie works as well as any other action-thriller. In other words, it’s no more unrealistic than any others in the genre.

The movie also seems to raise a question about the best way to teach, train, and ultimately raise autistic children. Whether that’s a legitimate question to raise, I’ll leave to the experts.

renton shooting...

Frank Sumrall

3 killed in Renton shooting, no suspects arrested

Three people were killed in a shooting in a Renton neighborhood, the Renton Police Department confirmed.

3 hours ago

Mario and Gail Cirasunda, of Orchard Park, N.Y., share a kiss on a bench following a Memory Cafe ev...

Associated Press

Memory cafes at the National Comedy Center ignite laughter and connection for dementia patients

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. (AP) 鈥 Side by side on a sofa inside the National Comedy Center, Gail and Mario Cirasunda chuckled at a clip from the 1980s sitcom 鈥淔amily Ties鈥 that was playing on a TV screen. The show鈥檚 oldest daughter, Mallory, was introducing her unconventional artist boyfriend Nick to her bewildered television family. 鈥淚 think […]

3 hours ago

A Sheriff's deputy pauses while combing through the banks of the Guadalupe River near Camp Mystic, ...

Associated Press

3 people are still missing from deadly July 4 floods in Texas county, down from nearly 100

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) 鈥 Officials in a Texas hill country community pummeled by deadly flooding on July 4 said Saturday that just three people remain missing, down from nearly 100, after people who had previously been reported missing have since been accounted for. The reduction in the number of people on the missing list came […]

4 hours ago

Associated Press

Arizona governor tours wildfire destruction along Grand Canyon North Rim

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs on Saturday toured the destruction caused by a wildfire along the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, surveying what she described as devastating damage, Hobbs called for an investigation into the handling of the blaze. The governor, who sought to gather information ahead of her meetings with federal officials next week, looked intently […]

5 hours ago

Associated Press

Execution date set for man who abducted woman from a Florida insurance office and killed her

A man who abducted a woman from a Florida insurance office and killed her is scheduled for execution in Florida under a death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Kayle Bates is set to die Aug. 19 in the 10th execution scheduled for this year. DeSantis signed the warrant Friday, just three days after […]

9 hours ago

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy testifies during a House Committee on Transportation and Inf...

Associated Press

Trump administration imposes limits on Mexican flights and threatens Delta alliance in trade dispute

The Trump administration imposed new restrictions Saturday on flights from Mexico and threatened to end a longstanding partnership between Delta Air Lines and Aeromexico in response to limits the Mexican government placed on passenger and cargo flights into Mexico City several years ago. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Mexico’s actions to force airlines to move […]

10 hours ago

‘The Accountant’ is a standard action-thriller that is just good enough